Boot Problem

[tmort]

I am experiencing errors when I boot up. I get some error messages and get a command prompt at the end. If I type exit at the command prompt it will then boot up.

The error messages are:

/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root:

unexpected inconsistency: Run fsck manually (i.e. without -a or -p options)

dracut warning: e2fsck returned with 4

dracut warning: /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root contains a file system with errors, check forced

dracut warning: /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root: Inodes that were part of corrupted orphan link found

dracut warning: ***An error occurred during file system check

dracut warning: *** Dropping you to a shell; the system will try

dracut warning: to mount the filesystem(s), when you leave the shell

dracut warding: Dropping to debug shell

sh:0:can't access tty: job control turned off (repair filesystem):#_

I'm not sure what to do to try to correct the problem.

[tashirosgt]

Just a guess: Could it be the same problem as in this thread: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=277866

[george_toolan]

Your file system has errors. Use the blkid command maybe to find out which partitions are involved and then run e2fsck on these partitions. First make sure they aren't mounted.

[Gareth Jones]

In the debug shell, run something like:

umount /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
fsck -f /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root

This will mount the root file-system read-only and force a full interactive check and repair. Then reboot. (If this starts asking hundreds of questions, you can force "yes" answers by running "fsck -f -y /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root" instead, but you may have serious corruption and trying to repair at that stage could actually cause more damage, so you may be better off asking about data-recovery tools instead in that case, unless you have an up-to-date back-up.)

Check the contents of /lost+found after rebooting – any lost files that fsck recovers but cannot identify are dumped there.

[jpollard]

Root should already be mounted read only - That is the one with the problem. Doing a umount on root will not help (it should give an error as "busy").

The fsck command should be ok (the -f shouldn't be needed as the mount failed because it wasn't clean, but won't hurt).

It also would not hurt to get familar with the fsck command. Some errors reported can cause cascading errors, where a single repair may fix one error, but not report others. Sometimes running it twice will show other errors that can be repaired after the first.

Usually only one pass is needed, but occasionally...

[tmort]

I did the umount and got the busy message and then ran the fsck command, selected yes at every prompt and ran fsck again and and again selected yes when prompted.. I still boot to a command prompt. If I try to run fsck again I get:

root@localhost ~]# umount /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
umount: /: device is busy.
(In some cases useful info about processes that use
the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))
[root@localhost ~]# fsck -f /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root is mounted.

WARNING!!! The filesystem is mounted. If you continue you ***WILL***
cause ***SEVERE*** filesystem damage.

Do you really want to continue (y/n)?

I think I got this same message the first time I ran fsck. It says that VolGroup-lv_root is mounted.

[Gareth Jones]

Don't run fsck if the file-system is mounted read-write – as fsck said, it can cause severe damage because fsck and the kernel are both likely to make structural changes to the FS in parallel without knowing about each other. You cannot fully unmount the root file-system, but attempting to do so will force it to remount read-only, which is safe to fsck as long as you reboot afterwards (to ensure that the kernel's cached file-system data is refreshed).

Try booting to single-user mode: edit the kernel command-line in GRUB (I think you need to press "e", but there should be instructions under the GRUB boot menu), and add " 1" to the end of the command-line. Then boot (again GRUB should tell you what to do to boot). Then run:

mount -o remount,ro /    # This is more explicit then just umount.
fsck -f /                # Only if the remount worked without errors.

---------- Post added at 05:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:00 PM ----------

I agree with jpollard that / should already be mounted read-only if its automatic fsck was failing, so I'm not sure exactly what is going on here, so let's be paranoid and make sure.

[tmort]

How do I boot to single user mode